Tag: saip

White People Have Money & Sex

Barns1 Comment

Without getting into too much detail – I’ll leave that for the academics slaving away in universities – I had a look at the perception of white/light skin in India, and how I feel about it. In short, white skin is beautiful, and foreigners who have it are rich and debauched. That’s the general consensus over here, but my own self-image?

I am very light-skinned. Pasty, even. My body is covered in spots of pigment, called moles, which prevent me from spending long amounts of time in the sun, and thus I cannot get a natural suntan. If I were so inclined, I could slather my skin with tanning creams on a daily basis and perhaps give off some orange illusion that I’m not almost translucent, but I’ve come to accept that this is just the way I am. My skin is not beautiful. There’s not much I can do about it, so I might as well learn to live with it.

Read more at The NRI…

Everyday Mornings on the Indian Railways

Barns2 Comments

Taking advantage of the extraordinary Indian Railways is a regular component of my life in Kerala. Being a hardworking Technopark salaryman I have to catch the train to and from work most days, which in and of itself is not all that remarkable; people do that all over the world, from Tokyo to London to Los Angeles. What makes my journey unusual, as I’ve mentioned before, is the fact that I’m the only regular who is a white man – the saip in their midst. How much I should interact is a constant dilemma as I try to balance the expectations of whoever it is I talk to, the many others watching, and indeed, the expectations I have of them.

…read more at The NRI…

One Simple Thing I Did To Change My Life

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I’m a celebrity!

On the street, heads turn wherever I go; in bars, patrons put down their glasses and look up at me. My presence sets women abuzz with chatter and invites men to look at me with bewilderment or smile with uncontrollable glee…  To think that all this time, I only had to go 7000 miles from home to attain that much-desired ‘women want to be with him, men want to share a beer with him’ status!

The thing is, I’ve done nothing to warrant my celebrity status.  I’m not a successful musician or actor, or even the Paris Hilton-esque ‘famous because I’m famous’.  The simple fact is this:  I am a white man in Kerala, or saip as locals would say in Malayalam.  From New Zealand, via Japan, and settled here for the indefinite future.

…read more at The NRI…